This one would connect well with readers in India where cricket isn't just a game but a religion and cricketers are not merely sportsmen but demigods.

You guessed it right. This is on the recently concluded IPL (Indian Premier League) match in India. But it is not about the finals where SRH (Sunrisers Hyderabad) clinched their maiden title against RCB (Royal Challengers Bangalore). It is on my thoughts about a rather outlandish situation where for the first time a team led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni was considered underdogs. Let me explain.

Until last year, IPL cricket matches were a must watch for diehard Chennai fans like me. Wearing the ‘lucky yellow’ jersey, we curiously followed the IPL party every time CSK (Chennai Super Kings) team played. Whenever the game demanded him the most, Captain Dhoni walked in style, and nine out of ten times, walked out of the park with a winning stump in his hand, of course after some last-over heroics. He was the most successful captain in the last eight seasons and had lead CSK to two IPL titles and as many Champions League titles. I always thought if it was Dhoni at the helm of affairs, the team will never have to worry about a berth in the finals.

Back then, had you even mildly predicted that in the next season, the great captain’s new team would not make it even to the playoffs stage, I would have seriously suspected your cricket instincts.

But, it DID happen this year in the IPL 2016 edition! Despite an experienced, mature and powerful captain on top, his new team was languishing at the penultimate position in the points table! And this was despite the fact that the captain had been playing consistently well this season to become the seventh batsman to score 3000 runs in the IPL!

Well, for the uninitiated, the story goes that following a two-year suspension of CSK, Dhoni was roped in by a new franchise from Pune (Rising Pune Supergiants). Thus, he had to start all over again, with almost all new members, while half his men were picked up by the other franchise from Rajkot (Gujarat Lions). Of course Virender Sehwag, the former Indian opener reflects on this scenario, “We saw that at Chennai Super Kings, Dhoni was on top of the world. His team would invariably make it to the playoffs, and the team won the league twice.But now the situation has changed. The team that Dhoni led for so long was disbanded and the players he has at the moment are good, not great.”

‘Good, not great’. That is a pointer! Dhoni just had some good players but not great ones! Does that mean, even a great Dhoni on top was not enough for the team’s victory?

Is the captain’s situation akin to that of a new team’s CEO? Notwithstanding a great CEO on top,why does a new business team fail to pick up? Is the CEO only as good as his team? Or am I drawing a wrong parallel here?

If I am right, then I feel it is not fair to squarely blame a CEO for the failure. Right from budget to brand visibility to marketplace, a new business has to fight humongous odds. For e.g. if getting on board some great hires was the simplest solution, it is easier said than done. A Steve Jobs could pursue the Pepsi executive John Sculley to lure him to Apple with his iconic question “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”  Is that possible for every CEO of a new business?

Sometimes even a simple fact like ‘all best men are already taken’ could prove lethal to a CEO’s new talent pool. Probably that could be true in Dhoni’s case as well, where half his best men were already playing in another team adding to the fact that the rest of the teams had fairly settled down over the last eight seasons vis-à-vis Dhoni’s new venture.

And things DO take time to reconcile. That applies to everything – be it a new business or a new sports team.

Do you agree? Or there is more to it?